


96 Hours

by ThePuma810



Category: The Killing
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28232607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePuma810/pseuds/ThePuma810
Summary: After 72 Hours, Holder realizes something is terribly wrong with Sarah. Could the brief hours in the psych ward have damaged her forever, or worse? AU.
Relationships: Stephen Holder/Sarah Linden
Comments: 17
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own The Killing. I just love to create stories and write them down. xS

Holder looked over at Linden’s unmoving form in the vehicle, still slumped against the car window in a dead sleep, as she had been since she’d followed him into the car. 

“You ok, there?” He paused and leaned toward her to look closer. His heart jumped as he couldn’t easily make out the rising or falling of her chest and her head was tilted at an angle that looked uncomfortable even to someone who was sleeping deeply. 

“Linden? You with me? Wake up, your neck is going to be so sore sleeping that way.” 

There was no response and his mind began to race in a million directions. Pull over. He had to find somewhere to pull over to make sure that she was all right. After all, had anyone at the hospital done a thorough examination of her real wounds before going along with the casino owner’s concocted story about a suicide attempt? Linden had belonged in a hospital bed, not a psych ward. She should still be in that hospital bed, barely more than twenty-four hours after she was attacked. Not in a car, driving away from the scene of her undoing. 

At long last, he was able to pull into a gas station and park the car opposite the pumps. He sprang out of the driver’s side and ran to the passenger side. 

“Linden? Sarah?” He hoped that using her given name would surprise her enough to get her to open her eyes. He opened the door and found his partner’s limp body tumbling into his arms. 

For a few seconds, Holder couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not. Her head lolled upon his shoulder and he felt a tiny puff of air coming from her lips as his fingers located a very weak pulse in her neck. 

“Linden, thank God,” he breathed. “I thought I’d lost you. Can you open your eyes?”

As he tilted her head back and brushed her coppery hair out of her face, he saw that her eyes were half open but unseeing. Holder felt sick to his stomach as he brushed a hand over the top of her head, noticing a large knot where she’d obviously been hit over the head on the tenth floor. As he continued to examine her head, Linden moaned quietly. 

“Can you hear me?” Holder couldn’t keep the desperation out of his voice. “Sarah!” 

Her head dropped back to his shoulder and she gave no answer. 

Holder fumbled for his phone in his pocket while struggling to still keep her from hitting the ground. He was crouched at such an awkward angle that it seemed nearly impossible to do both at once. 

“911, what’s your emergency?” The dispatcher’s voice came over the phone line after a ring or two. 

“This is Detective Stephen Holder,” he began. “My partner won’t wake up. She has a head injury but she was released from the hospital anyway… she won’t wake up. They put her in the psych ward because of a mix up and gave her a lot of drugs and I don’t know if she should have had all of that with her injury.” He looked back at the sign above the building behind him and gave the dispatcher the name of the gas station. 

Even though the dispatcher told him to stay on the line until the ambulance arrived, he turned his attention to Linden as soon as he was assured that help was on the way. 

“Hang in there, Linden, please, I can’t lose you.” She was still unmoving but he thought he might have seen a little change in her eyes. Were they more open than they had been a minute before or was it his imagination? She made no sound but he continued to talk to her as if she were totally alert. 

“I’m going to tell you what’s going on so you ain’t scared,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry, Linden. I should have made them break you out of there, gotten you checked out before we left, something. Thought they had done that but I guess not.”

“Detective?” A medic came up behind him but he had been too absorbed in talking to Linden that he hadn’t noticed the man approach. “You can give her to us now,” he said. “We’ll take very good care of her. You can ride up front or do you want to follow us?”

“I’ll follow,” he said. “I have to call Jack!” Holder dreaded telling her son anything until he knew what was going on, but the little man had a right to know that his moms was in the hospital. The first stint in the psych ward had been different; Holder didn’t know if Linden would want her son to know about that, but this was serious. He swallowed hard. “I’ll turn my lights and sirens on.”

***

Sarah was floating in total darkness but kept trying to surface. There was someone calling to her, someone who needed her to wake up even though her body felt sluggish and it was impossible to open her eyes. She wanted to go toward the voice but it was fading with every moment. 

Next, she was being pulled away from the voice that sounded like home and ended up in a tunnel... no, a hallway. It was impossible to tell in the dim light. Sarah’s eyes hurt and her head was pounding as she realized that she was once again five years old, abandoned in the apartment in which her mother had left her. It was dark and she tried to call out but no sound surfaced from her throat. 

As if a wave was crashing into her and crushing her head and torso, she was crumpled against the dark walls. Then she knew no more.


	2. Chapter 2

Holder was beside himself as he drove behind the ambulance, both vehicles racing along the streets of Seattle with lights flashing and sirens blaring into the downpour that had mercifully begun only after the EMT crew had placed Sarah inside. He shuddered at how still and pale her she had looked on the stretcher. She hadn’t regained consciousness no matter what the medics did to help her. This wasn’t his Sarah. She was strong and feisty, not limp and unresponsive, under many tubes and wires with an oxygen mask covering her face. Tears began to form in his eyes but he had to be strong for the both of them. Holder made himself concentrate on the road in order to not get into an accident. He couldn’t do Linden any good if he, too, were confined to a hospital bed from doing something stupid. 

He pulled into the parking lot adjacent to the ER and sprinted across to the door, panting as he hadn’t run that hard in years. It wasn’t that he was out of shape but only that he hadn’t had a reason to run like this. Sure, chasing a perp took energy but this was different. This was Linden. _His_ Linden. 

“Sarah Linden?” He asked as he reached the ER desk. “Ambulance just brought her in. I need to know how she is.”

The nurses looked at him with minor exasperation but one of them spoke as if she’d become used to dealing with frantic people years ago. “She’s in one of the trauma rooms, but you can’t see her, Mr…”

“Detective Stephen Holder,” he supplied, having regained a little of his breath as he reached for his badge and flashed it in front of the nurse. “I have to see her. I haven’t, you know, seen her since they took her in the ambulance and I have to know how she’s doing. She’s my partner and she’s hurt real bad.” 

“You’ll have to wait for the doctors to work on her,” the nurse said with a little more compassion in her voice. “It’s hard to wait, but they have to be able to do their jobs, Detective. Why don’t you stay over here,” she pointed toward a waiting room across from the nurses’ station. “You’ll be updated just as soon as the doctors have anything to tell us.” 

Holder nodded and muttered his thanks before turning around and heading to waiting room. Of course he couldn’t see her. Not yet.  
“Please hang in there, Linden. You have to be ok,” he said under his breath. It had only been one day since he’d told her to wait for him in the psych ward when he promised to come back for her, but it felt like weeks earlier. How could it be that she was in this shape now? This shape… he didn’t even know what that meant yet. But by the look of her going into the ambulance, it couldn’t be too good. 

He balled his right hand into a fist. If only he could go inside the casino and find whomever was responsible for the wound on Sarah’s head, he’d make them pay. However, in his recovery, he’d learned that this kind of thinking, this impulsivity, didn’t help anything. More likely than not, it would only do harm.

***  
It was the same oblivion in which she had fallen asleep that Sarah once again became aware of her existence. It was dark and she couldn’t move. Her body was heavy as if weighted down by something and she couldn’t breathe. Tears welled up in her eyes as she discovered that she couldn’t make a sound, nor did her arms or legs respond when she tried to move them. 

Then light began to come into the place where she was stranded. Linden could see that she was on a bed, one that was familiar in some way that she could not remember. Had she been here before? If so, when? Her eyes could still move despite the fact that the rest of her body could not. Sarah carefully surveyed the room, pain appearing and increasing in her eyes in head as she did so. But she had to know. 

That was when she saw the light switch. Every time she looked at it, the switch moved. Tears came as she remembered telling Holder about the worst part of a new foster home as a child: not knowing where the light switch was positioned. Same with the window and door. Back then, those things were her means of getting out of the room and the whole situation. As an adult, Sarah had promised herself to never let herself get into that kind of inescapable trap again. For the most part, she had succeeded. The month on the psych ward was one of few exceptions and that was why the previous day had been so devastating. Waking up with such pain behind her eyes in a locked ward was too eerie because of those memories. No wonder she’d made her plea to Holder to not leave her in there. If only she’d known what was coming, she might have asked for even more reassurance. Don’t leave me trapped in a dark room when my body can’t move.

 _Take me home. Holder. Help me._  


In the dim light, Linden located the window and door, too, but they moved about the room in the same way as the light switch, which was still changing positions. A strangled cry began to tighten her throat but she still couldn’t make a sound. Terror filled her body and mind as water began to rush in through the constantly moving doorway. She could see herself as if from above, paralyzed on the same twin bed on which she’d slept in various foster homes during childhood, only underwater with unseeing eyes staring straight up. She was frozen under the water much like some of the murder victims she’d found… much like… the name wouldn’t come to her mind but she could still see the pretty teenager in the trunk of the car, submerged. 

_Holder. Help me!_


	3. Chapter 3

_Holder! Help me!_

It was as if he could hear her! Holder nearly jumped before he turned around, half expecting to see Linden there. He knew that it was totally impossible. She was lying unconscious in a trauma room, surrounded by doctors who were frantically trying to bring her back to the waking world. When the nurses hadn’t been looking, he’d tiptoed to the doors leading into the room and perked inside, something which he wished he hadn’t done because now he couldn’t get the sight of her like that out of his mind. But he was convinced that somehow he’d heard her voice pleading with him much like she had done in the psych ward the day before. _Please don’t leave me here._

Then it came again. _I’m drowning. Help me!_

_Linden!_ He called out silently. The detective hung his head and willed his eyes to stay dry. Why would Linden think she was drowning? Then it dawned on him that he hadn’t called Jack. 

“Little Man,” he began to speak to the boy, his voice lacking the lightness it usually had when speaking to Sarah’s son, “there’s something I have to tell you.”

“What is it? Is it my mom? Holder! Please tell me!” Jack sounded frantic. 

“Yeah, your moms is in the hospital,” Holder began to explain. “It’s a long story but she is hurt real bad and I had to bring her to the ER. They haven’t told me much yet, but I know she’d want you to be here,” he said. He tried to think about how Linden would want him to tell her son about the previous day’s events. She wouldn’t want to overwhelm Jack with all the details, not yet. He was just a kid. “I can get you a plane ticket and arrange everything,” he offered.

“OK,” Jack said, swallowing hard over the phone. “Is she going to be all right?”

“Your moms is tough,” he answered. “But no matter how strong she is, she needs you, Little Man. You’ll be the best medicine she can have.”

They stayed on the line while Holder arranged for the flight. “Hang in there, Jack. I’ll see you soon.”

“Take care of her, OK?” Jack’s voice shook a little. It broke Holder’s heart. “Detective Holder?” The nurse approached him in the waiting room. “You can see your partner now. But I must warn you, she’s not in very good shape. We’ve been able to stabilize her but that’s about all.”

***

Sarah gasped again as she saw a watery form float toward her. At first glance, the figure appeared to be dead. She was a dark haired teenage girl with features that had once been very pretty before death erased the glow from her cheeks and abd made her eyes stare unseeingly ahead. Was this what Linden had become or was about to transform into? The thought made her shudder. 

_Holder! Help me!_

“You must love him a lot,” the girl said, turning her lifeless eyes on Linden. “Do you think he can hear you?”

“I don’t know,” Linden replied with tears catching in her voice, before realizing the novelty of being able to speak for the first time in this place. Was she joining the ranks of the dead? Was that why she could communicate with this girl?

“I’m Rosie, by the way,” the girl informed her. “You found me — my body — in the trunk of the car. I’ll get you didn’t expect to meet me here. I know that they hurt you because you’re trying to get justice for me. For what it’s worth, thank you.” 

__________Sarah just nodded._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“He hears you,” Rosie continued. “Keep calling to him. Make him know he’s not hallucinating or anything by being persistent. Bother him until he takes notice.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________Linden smiled at Rosie. She would have really liked this girl if they’d known each other in life. She had courage if nothing else._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“Why am I here?” Sarah asked Rosie. “This is just my childhood all over again, in the foster homes. I don’t belong here and now I’m drowning. Why?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________Rosie shrugged her shoulders. “I really don’t know, “she said. “I only know that I’m here because… Well, you know. But you, I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________Linden’s eyes filled with tears. “Then why can’t I just go back?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“Maybe you need to convince Holder,” Rosie suggested. “You know you love him and I think he’s the only one who can get you out of here.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“Just like yesterday,” Linden said. “It might’ve been Felder who signed the papers but it was Holder who was there to make sure that I didn’t have to say there a minute more.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“Then call out to him,” Rosie urged her. “Have him understand that he is the only one who can bring you back.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________Sarah told her head back toward the ceiling and screamed with all of her might, unlike the times when she had talked to him in her mind. Somehow, being with Rosie had enabled her to use voice. While she still had it, she woulduse it to the best of her ability._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“Holder! Help me! I’m drowning!”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________***_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________On his way to the ICU, Holder nearly jumped because the sound was so real. The nurse beside him startled._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“You OK, detective?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“Sure, I’m fine,” he fibbed while covering his confusion as to what had just happened. “Did you hear someone call my name? Holder?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________The nurse shook her head. “No, but it’s not exactly a quiet place here. Now, you need to be prepared to see your partner. Do you want to go in?”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________He took a deep breath and prepared himself for the worst. Not trusting his voice, he nodded._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________“OK,” said the nurse. “You need to realize that everything here is to help her survive. It looks very scary and she won’t be able to respond to anything you’re saying or doing, but it’s very important that you are here. People in her condition often report hearing loved ones talking to them even if they showed no outer signs they were responding. So whatever you do, please don’t give up on her.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______Holder shook his head. “That’s one thing I’ll never do,” he said. “She’s _my_ Linden.”_______


	4. Chapter 4

Holder waited until the nurse was gone to sit down beside the bed. He didn’t trust himself to keep composure if he was close enough to see exactly how frail Sarah was.

“Hey, Linden,” he began, awkwardly reaching for her hand. “Are you gonna talk to me more? Because I know you have been. I ain’t crazy and I’m totally sober, so there’s only one answer for that. You’re talking. Up here in the gray matter.” He tapped his head and forced a weak smile. She was so still and covered in tubes and wires that he was doing all he could to not break down and cry. He focused on her eyes; though closed, they looked peaceful and the most like her, as if he’d caught her taking a nap in the car or falling asleep at her desk. 

“You ain’t drowning, Sarah. I just want you to know. You are breathing, even if it’s hard to believe with all this stuff. I’m here and I’m not leaving. Just to go get Jack when his plane comes in, but that’s not for a while. You gotta promise me to not go anywhere while I’m getting him. Or any other time. Little Man needs his moms. I need you, too.”

Then he allowed himself to let down as he cradled his head in his hands and cried. 

***

Rosie looked up at the sound of sobbing as it filled the room. “That’s him,” she said pointedly. 

“I know,” Sarah sighed and not her lip. “How do I let him know I’m still here? That I can hear him.” 

“Your guess is as good as mine,” the teenager said. “He needs to know that you need him.”

Sarah began to cry softly at the sound of her partner’s distress. What was going on? One minute she’d left the hospital, been helped into his car, fallen asleep and now this. Her head had hurt the whole day in the psych ward, but she’d had more pressing business that demanded her concentration, such as getting out of there. She hadn’t felt the full force of the throbbing until she leaned against the cool glass of the window in the car, but then she was sliding away from everything… Holder, the car, the road, the case, her life. It was too late to say anything. 

“I’m not drowning,” she repeated the words that just crossed her mind. Had Holder said that? When she thought the words, they were in his voice. Was he telling her something? 

_You ain’t drowning, Sarah._

_I need you, too._

“Is that you, Holder? Please help me,” she said aloud while her voice was still audible. “Come get me just like you did yesterday. Please. You’re the only one who can help me. I… need you.”

Rosie raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you don’t mean more than ‘need’? You did hesitate.”

“I don’t know,” Sarah admitted. “I’ve never really even thought it through, let alone said it out loud.”

“You don’t need to think. Just feel.”

“I think I love him,” Linden said slowly. “I have loved him. For a long time.”

“Then you need to let him know,” Rosie said. “Let him know as soon as you can because you don’t want it to be too late.”

“Too late?” Sarah questioned.

“Don’t leave him,” Rosie said. “He loves you and you love him.”

“Leave him?” It was all beginning to be too confusing for her. “I am going back to Holder, aren’t I? Isn’t that the whole point of being able to hear him and realize that I love him? If I weren’t going back, why would any of this be happening? I’m not dead or anything, no offense.”

“I don’t know,” Rosie sighed, “but selfishly speaking, I need you to be there. Only you can get justice for me. And the others. Like Trisha.”

At the mention of Trisha‘s name, Sarah felt as if a weight had slammed into her whole body. The case had haunted her ever since she was certain that it wasn’t wrapped up correctly. Sure, Ray Seward was in jail, but was he really the right man? And what about Adrian? Sarah felt as though she was going to be ill.

Then she looked up and could not see Rosie anywhere. The girl had simply vanished. Truly alone, Linden lowered her head in despair. She sobbed lightly but no sound came out. Once again, Linden was without a voice, without any way to communicate with anyone.

Then she heard steps in the hallway outside of the room. They made Sarah‘s heart pound twice as hard as it had been doing already. Who could be coming? She tried to call out but nothing came out. She sat there helplessly on the bed and watched the door push open, light pouring in that finally illuminated a figure that she nearly recognized.

The man stepped inside the room and the fear inside Linden began to melt. For a moment, she could not remember him but she instinctively knew that he was not anyone to be afraid of. As he stepped farther into the light from the hallway, she found herself staring into the face of her partner.

Holder. 

Had he come to save her? 

“Yo, Linden, what are you doing here? I’m coming to get you out,” Holder said.

As in the presence of Rosie, Sarah found that she could speak aloud again. “How can you be here? I thought you were calling to be from somewhere else,” Sarah said, thoroughly confused.

“I don’t know, but I’m glad that I can see you again like this. Alive. I don’t mean you’re not alive… don’t get me wrong. You’re just not… you, if you know what I mean.” 

Sarah looked at him quizzically. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Of course I’m alive. I’m not exactly sure where this is,” she gestured to the room and the hallway, “but of course I’m alive. What else would I be?” 

The expression in Holder’s eyes was one of inexplicable pain. “You’re hurt real bad, Sarah.”

The missing pieces in Sarah’s head began to fill in. She had suddenly arrived in this strange place where her head throbbed and she couldn’t move or leave to find her way back to Holder. “What does this all mean?” Her voice was barely above a whisper, shaking with each breath. 

“It means that they’re doing everything they can but I don’t know if you’ll make it back to me or not,” he confessed. “This is some kind of dream land, Linden. You’re not really here. I’ve been with you since we got to the hospital and you ain’t waking up.” A lone tear dropped from his eye. “I need you to come back to me. I need you.” He took a deep breath and prepared himself for what he wanted to say next, but she interrupted him. 

“You’re not… hurt, too?” 

He shook his head. “I must have fallen asleep or something. Nothing happened to me. Not like that. Watching you is rough. I don’t know what to do to help you,” he added.

Sarah reached for his hand. “Stay with me.” Then she reached up to him and kissed him so deeply that he felt he was growing breathless but couldn’t care less if he ever breathed again if it was apart from her. “I love you, Stephen.” Sarah looked into his eyes and smiled. 

He jerked awake to the sound of alarms from her bedside. Something was going terribly wrong. His eyes flew to Linden’s still expressionless face as a nurse was pulling him out of his chair and pushing him into the hallway. 

“Sarah! I love you, too!” The door swung shut in his face and he was alone once again. He stumbled out of the way of the doctors crushing into her room. “Don’t leave me, please. Come back to me. I can’t live without you.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Stephen!” Sarah screamed as Holder disappeared from her sight in the blink of an eye after she had asked him to stay. 

Everyone leaves. She fought the familiar feeling of hot tears threatening to slip out of her eyes and the rising sickness from deep within her body that had come every time someone had abandoned her. Men had triggered the feeling numerous times, but often the very thought of Sarah’s mother was enough to set it in motion. Her first betrayal and the one that had marked the course of much of her life. 

“You promised,” she muttered to the place where Holder had stood only seconds earlier. “Don’t be like the others, please. I didn’t think I needed to run from you.” 

_I love you, Sarah!_ The words slammed into her mind as strongly as if they were audible, just as they had done before he had appeared in her in-between world in person. _Don’t leave me! Come back to me! I can’t live without you!_

Leave? What was happening? Sarah felt a chill run throughout her body. Leaving surely didn’t mean she was… no. Not that. She wasn’t ready for that. Not when she and Holder had just declared their love for each other, even in such a place as this. Not when Jack still had to grow up and needed her as much as she needed him. Not with years ahead of her. She couldn’t be… no. Odd, she thought, as the thoughts swirled in her mind. The homocide detective who dealt with the deceased on a daily basis couldn’t bring herself to think the word ‘dead’. It couldn’t mean her. 

“Holder!” She shouted his name into the void. “Don’t give up on me!” 

_You’re my Linden,_ came the response. _Don’t go anywhere._

Linden could have wept to sense his reply. Even though it was a communication that had gone from thoroughly odd to seemingly normal, it was still a connection and she might as well disappear from life if it were lost. 

“Sarah,” a voice said in the void of the room in Sarah’s memory. 

She turned around slowly, hoping to see Holder but a different person was waiting there for her. 

“Mom.” The word was flat in Sarah’s lips. There wasn’t a feeling of elation or the fulfillment of a longing because she had long given up hope of a joyous reunion with her mother. Wherever she had gone after leaving Sarah, she clearly wasn’t interested in coming back. It was a fact that Linden had learned to accept, despite the pain. Her words came out in blunt, flat tones. “Are you dead, too?”

Sarah’s mother shook her head. “No, and neither are you. But I’m not here to persuade you to live. You already have someone who’s invested enough in you to communicate with you across the lines of unconsciousness. I’m here because I need you to let me go so you can stop running. At least from those who matter.” 

Sarah’s face grew hot and she felt the old anger that had accompanied her after the age of five flood into her system with driving force. “No, you want me to tell you what you did was ok. I can’t do that. It was wrong and we both know it. I don’t think you want me to stop running because I don’t think it matters to you one way or the other. If it mattered to you, then you wouldn’t have run from me.”

Sarah’s mother sighed. “You’re right. I didn’t care the way I should have. But you’re better than me, Sarah. You’d never run from Jack. If you want to hate me, that’s understandable. But think about Jack and your love for him. Wouldn’t you want him to have a good life even if you’d done something unforgivable?” 

The tears Sarah had been trying to keep at bay came pouring down her face. “Often I was sure I’d done a lot of unforgivable things. But Jack doesn’t seem to think so. He loves me, even if it’s hard to tell.” 

“See? That’s what I mean. That’s enough reason to stop running. Holder loves you, too. The world won’t let you down the way I have. You don’t have to believe me, but I want you to give yourself peace, Sarah. You deserve it.” 

Suddenly Sarah looked at her mom in a different light. No longer was she the adult in a relationship between parent and child. They were both adults and Sarah had no reason to be afraid. She was an adult with a couple of people in her life who were worthy of sticking around. They’d proven it and so had she. Sending Jack to Chicago was one the most painful things she’d done but it was in Jack’s best interest. 

“You’re right,” she murmured. “Holder and Jack, they’re not like you. I don’t have to worry about them.” Holder had come through for her in amazing ways and she had a feeling that he was still doing that l in this very moment. The next words came in a whisper: “I won’t run from them.” Even though she didn’t say it aloud, Linden knew that this was the beginning of her peace. 

Her mother must have been able to sense it because a small smile played upon her lips. “You deserve better than I gave you and better than you’ve given yourself,” she said. “Be well, Sarah.” Then she was gone. 

Sarah stared toward the light in the hallway. She couldn’t say that what her mother had done was all right but she could choose more peace for herself than she had previously done. The next order of business, Linden decided, was how to avoid this ‘dead’ business. She still could not think the word, let alone give into it. 

“Here goes nothing,” she said under her breath as she slowly pushed herself to the edge of the bed and put one foot on the floor at a time. Half expecting the floor to be vapor underneath her, Sarah was pleased to see that it was solid, suitable for walking. 

But was she? Had whatever was happening to her body in the world preventing her from regular movement here? Walking over to Stephen had bern different because their love had given her strength and resolve. 

But now she was on her own with her own decision to make. She decided to made that choice with each step on legs that felt heavy but determined. The hallway was waiting. It was the path Holder had taken in; surely it was the path that she could take out of the room and this shadowy place. One step at a time, Sarah focused on what was ahead. 

_I love you, Mom._

It was Jack’s voice this time. Sarah quickened her pace to the best of her ability. Her partner and her boy were waiting. 

“I’m on my way.”


	6. Chapter 6

After the alarms had sounded, Holder was escorted out of Sarah’s room as doctors and nurses stormed in. As soon as all of the chaos slowed down, he noticed a figure running toward him. It was Jack. 

“Holder! How’s my mom? I took a taxi from the airport since I didn’t know when you could leave,” he explained, his eyes never leaving the door in which the flurry of harried medical personnel had just run through as he had arrived. 

Holder didn’t know whether to scold the boy for taking such a risk or hug him with relief for showing up. “She’s not too good, Little Man,” he said. “They’re in with her now. I was just sitting there and all these alarms started going on,” he explained. It was best that the boy understood the truth. 

The perplexed looking doctor came through the doorway. “I don’t know what just happened, to be honest,” he cleared his throat. “We were losing her. Heart rate, breathing, everything was crashing. But as soon as it started, she came back to a normal pattern and actually seems like she’s starting to turn the corner.” 

Holder released a breath he didn’t realize he’d been keeping trapped in his chest. “She’s getting better?” 

“I don’t want to speak too soon at this point, but it does appear so,” the doctor said. “The anti-inflammatory drugs that we gave her for the swelling in her head wound can work very quickly, and it could be that they have started to kick in already. What we are giving her to flush the drugs out of her system will take longer. This means she’ll probably be unconscious for a couple of days, but the original wound is healing. We didn’t know at first if she would require surgery to reduce the swelling, but it looks like we’re able to handle it with the medication.“

“Thank you, Doctor,” Holder said. “Can we go see her now?”

“Yes,” the doctor agreed. “I think the two of you are good medicine for her. Every patient needs as much support as long as they could have and I would say that she has this in abundance.” 

“Thank you, Doctor. This is Sarah’s son, Jack. So from what I’m understanding, it’s cool if he comes in, too, right?”

“Of course,” he nodded. “It’s not the typical thing because of his age, but I think it’s necessary in this case.”

A few minutes later, Holder sat beside Linden’s bed on one side with Jack on the other side. He was relieved that the doctor had agreed to Jack’s presence there because something inside Holder told him that it was necessary for his partner’s survival. 

Jack looked at his mother’s still form in the bed, trying to hide the shock in his widened eyes, but Holder could see through it. 

“It’s ok, Little Man, it’s hard for me to see her like this, too.”

Jack swallowed hard. “At least they let us back in to see her,” he said in a quiet voice. 

“Yo, Linden, it’s me, and Jack just got here. He wanted to see you as soon as I told him about you,” Holder began. 

“Hey, Mom,” Jack said quietly. “Please come back to us. We need you. I need you. I already miss you so much with you being here and me being with Dad.” 

Holder smiled sadly as he watched the boy. He picked up Sarah’s hand and held it gently between his own palms, caressing it a little. He glanced at Jack, not wanting to give too much away regarding his feelings for Sarah in front of the boy because he had enough to deal with just seeing her in the bed and everything. 

But Jack was not a boy from whom it was so easy to conceal the truth. “You really love her, don’t you?” A lone tear glimmered in his eye. 

It was no use to lie. “Yeah, Little Man, I do,” he answered. 

“Then she has even more reason to fight,” Jack said, his eyes not leaving his mother’s face. “It’s what I always wanted, you know.”

Holder nodded. It had registered in some level but it was good to hear it from Jack. He sighed as he returned his attention to Sarah. “They’re telling me that you’re starting to get better now. I knew no one could keep my Linden down for long.”  
There was still no response from her and it seemed odd that he wasn’t receiving any more messages from her even in his mind. 

_Why the radio silence, Linden? If you’re getting better, then you should be able to talk to me here._

“How long do you think she’ll be like this?” Jack asked in a small voice. 

“Doc says it could be a while,” he began. “You see, I didn’t think she’d want me to you about what happened yesterday, but I can see that it’s totally necessary. She was in the casino, looking for evidence and she found a key card from city hall. Proof that someone was there that night the girl was killed. And I kept telling her to turn her flashlight off but someone came and I could hear some kind of a struggle. Next thing I know, ambulance is coming and they’re taking out the casino. Instead of putting her in the regular hospital, she’s in the psych ward because of some stupid excuse that she was trying to kill herself. It was all a lie. You and I both know that’s not how she is. They were covering it up, that chief who had me almost killed, so what was he going to do to her? They gave her a bunch of drugs to make her comply but none of them treated the way her head was hurt. Then she fell asleep in my car and I couldn’t wake her up. That’s when I brought her here and called you.” 

Jack’s eyes were wide. “Wow. But she’s getting better, really? Because she looks…”

Holder stood up and moved to the other side of the bed in order to put an arm around the boy. “I know, but we’ve gotta listen to the doctors because they know about this stuff. Please, Sarah, help us out a little.” 

Her face was still oddly placid, eyes closed and oblivious to everything there. Had Holder’s dream been only that, a wish made more real for a moment? She couldn’t really leave them, could she? “I was just getting used to having you around,” he whispered. 

_I’m on my way._

“Did you hear that?” Jack turned to Holder.

“I most certainly did.”

“What does it mean? Am I going crazy or something?” 

Holder shook his head. “It might mean that your moms heard us.” He leaned down to Sarah’s unconscious form and kissed her gently on the forehead. “Please come back to us.”


	7. Chapter 7

In the hallway between shadowy rooms, Sarah could hear Holder and Jack. She even feel the tender kiss on her forehead. It made her melt with affection for the kind man who had given it to her as she blushed with love at the same time. Holder was the real thing, she was beginning to realize. He was what she’d longed for all of her life. 

“Please wait for me,” she called with a stronger voice than before. After releasing her bitterness toward her mother, Sarah discovered that she could speak aloud whether or not she was in the presence of another person. She was strong enough to speak for herself. 

As she walked farther away from the room in which she’d lain helpless on the bed of her childhood foster homes, her legs felt stronger and more able to carry her where she wanted to go. _I’m not trapped._

_No, you’re not. I’m proud of you, Sarah. Just keep coming back to me. To us. Jack and me._

It was Holder’s voice and it brought a genuine smile to her lips. “I’m on my way,” she said. “It’s a long hallway, I don’t know where it ends. But I’m not giving up.” Not this time, she vowed to herself. This was real and she wasn’t about to miss it.

“Please, Holder, stay with me and help me. I don’t want to start to feel lost again,” she said. “Keep talking to me, please.”

Linden’s feet began to feel heavy and she slumped against a wall. She briefly allowed her eyes to rest but was horrified by what she saw. Holder and Jack were sitting in a sterile looking room, on either side of what appeared to be a bed, although she couldn’t be sure. What struck her the most was the deep expression of sadness on each of the faces, combined with worry. They didn’t even look like themselves because they were transformed by the tension present in their bodies. What were they looking at? Sarah leaned in closer to see and was shocked by what she saw. It was her in the bed; still and lifeless. Her body was attached to countless machines to keep her alive. As a minute passed, she saw that there was no change in her dire state in that other place where Holder and Jack were so sad. Why wasn’t she waking up? She wanted so badly to come back. Was there something wrong?

Sarah forced herself to stand upright and pry her eyes open. Her body was screaming for rest, but she knew that if she gave in, she might be stuck in this hallway forever and wouldn’t find her way back to the people that she loved. “Please, Holder,” she repeated, “help me. Talk to me.”

Once she was finished speaking, she felt a warm weight on her right hand. Looking down, Sarah’s hand didn’t appear to be any different than before. But it felt warmer with each passing moment, more alive. 

But as she blinked her eyes, she saw flashes of the room in which her body lie and noticed that Holder had leaned over and picked up her right hand. He was holding it in both of his, murmuring words of comfort against it. Even here, she could feel the warmth radiate through her hand to her entire body. On the other side, Jack was holding the other hand. As she stood there in the hallway, a beautiful sensation of love crept into every corner of her body, beginning from the hands that were being held in that other room.

 _I’m coming back,_ she thought. _Just wait for me. I’m doing my best._

As she let the warmth overtake her, she could feel her body sensing less and less of the hallway and more of the white, sterile room. The next time when she closed her eyes, she was unable to open them again. 

This frightened her at first, but then she could hear her partner and son talking in audible voices, not just in her thoughts. Was she coming back to her body? Had she been away from it all this time? 

“Sarah, can you hear me?” Holder’s voice sounded only inches away. “It looked like you were trying to open your eyes. Can you try again for us?” 

She tried to comply with his request, but her eyelids were too heavy to move. They might as well have been filled with sand. 

A hand stroked her forehead. “It’s ok,” he said. “Just rest. We’ll be here. Jack and I aren’t going anywhere.”

In a manner in which she would not normally surrender, Sarah gave into the sleepiness that was keeping her from opening her eyes. At least she did not see the hallway or feel that she was apart from Holder and Jack anymore; she was thoroughly in their world, not the odd dream in which she’d been trapped since she fell asleep in the car. Without struggle and without words, Sarah drifted into a dreamless sleep while still surrounded by the warmth of the love of her partner and son. 

Two days passed and Sarah did not yet wake, but Holder was unusually calm about it. He trusted Linden to find her way back and the most practical thing to do was to stay with her and wait for that moment to arrive. He sent Jack to Regi’s boat for some sleep between the days of waiting, yet refused to leave Sarah’s side. Even though a few of the tubes and machines had been removed as she floated up toward consciousness, he didn’t want her to be afraid upon awakening in an unfamiliar place while still attached to so many strange things. He wanted to be the one to hold her hand and speak to her in a calm voice, explaining as much of the previous days’ events as he thought she could handle in the moment. Sarah had been afraid enough. In his presence, she wouldn’t have to feel that way again if he could help it.   
She hadn’t shown any visible change when Holder suddenly had a feeling that she was about to wake up, but that didn’t stop him from calling her name and studying her face with deep concentration, looking for any sign that she could hear him. 

“Sarah? Can you hear me? It’s me, Holder. I just have this feeling that you’re almost here. Please open your eyes.” 

She once again tried to move her heavy eyelids, the warmth in her body making her drowsy. However, this time it worked. She opened her eyes just a crack at first, barely enough to let in any light and color. But it was enough.

“You heard me! Please keep going!” Holder’s voice had tears in it and she wondered why. 

Her next attempt to open her eyes worked better and she was able to see him leaning over her, not even trying to hide the tears falling down his cheeks. She tried to say something but her lips and mouth were dry and her throat was sore. 

It was as if Holder read her mind. “Don’t try to say anything, not yet, you’re just waking up. Thank you so much for coming back to me. Jack’s at Regi’s but I’ll call him to come back soon. Are you in any pain?”

She gingerly shook her head. The pounding that had haunted her since the night in the casino was gone. Swallowing hard, she formed a few whispery words. “I missed you,” she said. 

Holder laughed gently, taking her hand in his and kissing it. “I know the feeling,” he began. “I haven’t seen those eyes in ninety-six hours. I just want you all to myself for a couple more seconds before the doctors come to check you out.” 

She managed a weary smile in response. “I love you,” she confessed. “I think I have loved you for a while now, but it must have taken getting hit over the head to come to my senses.” Her lips formed a wry smile just before the doors burst open and the medical team came to check her over. 

Holder backed up to the wall but didn’t move toward the doorway. No way was he leaving now that his Linden was back. He’d spent enough time apart from her. It didn’t take the doctors long to conclude that she was progressing even more rapidly than they had expected. The drugs were out of her system. All she had to do was spend a couple of more days under observation and, barring anything unexpected, she’d be free to go. 

Holder watched her fall asleep that night, relishing every natural rise and fall of her chest, every tiny move she made as she went into a natural sleep for the first time in days. He joined her in slumber with a smile on his lips. Tomorrow would be a new day and she could catch up with Jack and Regi, but tonight it was just the two of them and their dreams of the future that was just around the corner. 

The End


End file.
